11/14/2023 0 Comments Forged in fire cutting deeperNo matter how assured the characters are that they possess the most righteous framework through which to understand the world, their blindspots lead them into sometimes criminal entanglements that they can’t philosophize their way out of. Set in modern-day New Zealand, Birnam Wood (Macmillan) is a multi-layered book that reads, at times like a far-left anti-capitalist manifesto, at times like a techno-futurist manual, at times like suburban ennui-driven domestic fiction-in short, it’s a book of contemporary ideas, somehow woven together into a thriller that is subtly poking fun at the absolutism all those perspectives entail. This is a warm blanket of a book, one that reminds you of the enveloping power of literature and leaves you very grateful to have encountered it.-C.S. Napolitano has an uncanny ability to pack her paragraphs with rich detail, painting entire landscapes-interior and exterior-with startling emotional economy. In college William becomes involved with Julia Padavano, a relentlessly ambitious young women from a boisterous Chicago family, and is quickly subsumed by her desires and trajectory. But William Waters's tragic past is rendered, on the first page of this novel, with such heartbreaking specificity-his three-year-old sister died in her crib the week he was born, plunging his parents into a state of mourning they never escape-that readers will be forewarned that they have a distinct experience ahead of them. The Everlasting Meal Cookbook: Leftovers A-Z by Tamar Adler (March)Īnn Napolitano's Hello Beautiful is a tribute to Little Women, telling the story of four sister and the man who enters their orbit when he marries the oldest daughter. I loved this wild, imaginative, fast-moving book and can’t wait to see the inevitable screen adaptation.-T.A. Lovecraft and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. The bulk of the book, set in the resulting society of human survivalists on the icy continent tells a story of genetic experimentation that recalls H.P. The alien invasion that begins the book and prompts a desperate evacuation to Antarctica–the only place the aliens will let humans live–is bizarrely cursory, but Smith is getting it out of the way. Cold People is a zany, wildly gripping, dark futuristic fantasy that never remotely achieves plausibility but achieves escapist lift-off nonetheless. Had Smith who pivoted into TV writing with The Assassination of Gianni Versace and other shows lost his way? Nope. What is the author of a trilogy of elegant historical espionage novels (the bestselling Child 44 books) doing writing a sci-fi monster novel set in Antarctica? I read the summary of Tom Rob Smith’s Cold People (Scribner)–an alien invasion wipes out Earth’s population driving the lone survivors to Antarctica to set up a new society–with bemusement. This is a book for the SATC superfans, but it is also for anyone curious about the lived experience of Downtown culture in the ’70s, ’80s, and beyond.-C.S. You didn’t need to have a lot of retail experience to work for Patricia Field, it seems, but you did need to have a whole lot of the right kind of attitude. But it also covers her more tender years growing up in New York City and Long Island, how her early store, Pants Pub, ignited a small revolution in downtown fashion, and how subsequent boutiques became a refuge for fantastic misfits of all stripes. Patricia Field’s memoir covers the territory you’d expect it to cover: how she got her gig as the costume designer for Sex In the City (including a charming anecdote about how she convinced showrunner Darren Star that a tutu was far superior to a shift dress for Carrie’s ensemble in the opening credits), her more recent exploits as the force behind the eyeball-scorching outfits on Emily In Paris. His gothic predilections are not for everyone (the Trawler’s kills are grotesque) but the evocation of a certain kind of vacant privilege-a buried longing overlaid with studied dissociation-is masterful.-Taylor Antrim Sam by Allegra Goodman (January) Ellis holds nothing back through these 600 pages: baroque violence, startling eroticism, relentless cataloging of mood-specific song and movie titles. It stars none other than Ellis himself, a prep school senior writing a novel called Less Than Zero and surrounded by a pack of rich beautiful friends who are themselves shadowed by a serial killer nicknamed the Trawler. The Shards, Ellis’s hypnotic, prodigious, and unsettling new novel-his first in 13 years-is a time machine back to that early 80s milieu. Bret Easton Ellis’s first novel, Less Than Zero, published in 1985, is hard to shake-a drifting, menacing story about Los Angeles private school kids with monosyllabic names (Clay, Blair, Trent, Rip) who go to parties, do drugs, have sex and try to feel something about any of it.
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